“Because we’re not riders.”
“I could hearthe horses. I could hear it plain as plain the other night. I likedit.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s not for us.”
“You say. Yousay. Youdon’t know what I am. Youdon’t run my life!”
“Yeah, well, kid, I’m just trying to get you to grown-up and then you can find a horse if you want one. But meanwhile Ineed you. Ineed you. Does that matter at all?”
“That’s a cheat. You don’t need me.”
“Who the hell else am I doing this for? Who’d I haul up this damn mountain besides—besides our sister, who’s not my reason.” Luckily it was dark. Tears didn’t show. “Kid, I’m tired. I’m really tired.”
“You should have beat hell out of him.”
“Well, I don’t want to. And that’s my business.”
“I could catch that horse.”
“You’re a damn fool.” Of a sudden he had a terrible notion of Randy actually going out the gate, and he sat up on his cot, swung his feet off the side and grabbed hold of Randy’s arm. “Don’t you think about it! Don’t you think about it, or damn you to hell, Randy Goss! Don’t you double-cross me like that and get yourself killed— because that’s what will happen!”
“I’m not going to,” Randy said. “Let go. That hurts.”
He’d held too hard. He bent over and hugged his brother. Ruffled his hair in the dark. “I love you,” he said. He didn’t know if he’d ever said it to anybody. He didn’t know if anyone had ever said it to him. “You’re a good kid.”
“Not a kid,” Randy complained.
“Not grown yet, either. I want to see you get there. All right?”
“Yeah,” Randy said, embarrassed, Carlo was sure, and hegot back on his own cot and pulled the covers over him.
Randy should have something good out of his life. Randy was smart. He was quick with people—like in church. Randy’d realized what he had to do, and he’d done it with a passion, and madepeople like him.
That was a gift. That was a real gift. He wished he had it.
Hellwith this horse business, Randy was cut out for dealing with people and having a wife and kids he’d spoil rotten, if he just figured out that was the way families were supposed to work.
Because there wasgoodness in Randy. Randy was going through that stage of being too tough to think straight, but there was a good kid there, a good heart that deserved friends like he’d been lucky enough to have, guys that were dead down in Tarmin, names that just—didn’t exist anymore.
He gave a long breath, realizing it was the first time he’d been able to think calmly about what had happened, having learned fast in all those days with Danny how to keep his mind offtroubling subjects—and now really believing that nobody in the village could possibly hear his thoughts.
He hadn’t realized until now he’d been scared of that. But he had been. Fear was a good teacher.
And when Danny had said he’d confessed to the riders all those things he’d not admitted out loud, he’d just blown up. Just blown up, in total startlement. Danny hadn’t come back. He didn’t know how Danny took it. Danny hadn’t come back, and he and Randy went to church where Danny couldn’t go. What had thrown them together was unraveling, and Danny probably thought—
—probably thought that it was a good thing, finally, to bein the rider camp, among people with whom he’d been able to tell the truth. And a good thing that he and Randy and Brionne were on this side of the wall, and that the world was back in order.
He’d no doubt that Danny would keep his promise in the spring and help him and Randy get where they needed to go. But by that time there’d be a decent, god-fearing distance between them, and he’d be—
Damn lonely.
But he’d get the shop back. He’d train Randy in the trade. The neighbors couldn’t tell what they’d known. They were dead. There was no one—
A jolt hit his heart.
The jail record. Court records. All of that was intact down in Tarmin. Food and leather was gone. Paper—wouldn’t be unless weather got to it.
All of those records. The court clerk had been writing that night, and that record was down there, in the judge’s office.
He thought he might throw up.
Everythingwas ruined if that record was there. He had to get there. First. Somehow. Somebody had to, that he could trust—somebody like Danny, who could find those books and just get rid of them, or if he could go withDanny, who’d be under pressure from everybody in the village wanting to go down there, and the Mackeys and a whole lot of other people finding himthe obstacle to their ambitions. Those records could give them everything they wanted.
He knew they’d written him down for murder. He didn’t know, on account of Randy’s age and his statement, whether they’d written him down the same. But they’d locked Randy up with him. Age hadn’t deterred the law from that.
And the Mackeys—if they had that to use—they’d have no scruples.
All right, he said to himself. All right. There was time. There was all winter to figure it out. He could trust Danny. He could ask Danny for help. He could hope Danny wasn’t angry at him.
The whole night had assumed a chancy, awful feeling. As if—as if the veneer of recent days had started to peel away a layer at a time—and tonight the undersurface was showing through.
He didn’t hear the <blood on snow> sending now. He heard a single, faraway shot, but didn’t think the shot had hit anything. It felt scary out there. Real scary.
He’d rather be afraid of the dark out there than think the thoughts he was left with tonight. He all but wished the horse wouldcome back, and give him some other worry tonight, and give him some excuse to go to the rider camp with something other than what he could think of to say, like—
Danny, I know I was an ass. And there’s a favor I have to ask you.
A really big favor.
Like—get meto Tarmin. And notthe rest of the village.
He felt—a falling, then. Tasted <blood> very strongly. He twitched, maybe the remnant of the shivers—maybe just the edge of a nightmare.
After that, there was just <dark> and <running through the trees, running and running> that was somehow less terrible than that short, sharp inhalation of blood that he could still smell— he’d never known blood had a smell. But after Tarmin he had a sense for it.
After Tarmin he dreamed of that smell—and didn’t want to, tonight.
Didn’t want to sleep at all. Just wanted to ride that feeling, <on and on, across the snow.>
Then he didsee <blood on snow,> and he knew what had caught him in his dreams, and what carried him along, buffeted by evergreens and blinded by falling snow.
It remembered <blood,> too. And it carried him in a long, dizzy, heart-pounding flight along the snowbound road, back the way they’d come, he was sure of it.
It had a den there, where a slide had taken trees down. It had a shelter. That was where it was going—until it faded on him, and left him wandering that wilderness and then the dark of the forge, with his eyes wide open.
A sound rasped breathily in the night beside him. Randy was snoring.
Chapter 17
The sun did come up.
There’d been no gunfire in the Mackey house. Rick showed up for work sullen and sulking, but cowed and not saying a word— so, charitably, Carlo didn’t. The water still soaked the floor, but it wasn’t standing in puddles, and it went away when they stoked up the furnace and the heat got up.